After The Apocalypse (Book 2): Church of Chaos (6 page)

Chapter 10

Dinner in the underground turned out to be pan friend potatoes with chunks of sausage and little bits of green peppers. The conversation revolved around an increase in rent taxes that the king was threatening to inflict upon the poorest people in the city.

The general consensus was that the citizens of Ra-Shet were already being taxed to their breaking point and that additional fines could very well start riots in the poorest neighborhoods. Dinner conversation revolved around possible evacuation routes from the city if things got too bad. One woman was concerned that zombies would be turned loose in the Burroughs as a form of intimidation. No one disagreed and I was suddenly, overwhelmingly glad that I hadn't grown up in the city.

The Cube might have been restrictive, but I had never lived in fear of the Powers That Be. Not until after I'd met Seth, anyways.

When dinner was over, everyone dispersed to wherever they spent their nights. I went up to the top of the building to stare out the window and wait for Seth to return. I'd been sitting in a windowsill for more than an hour when I heard someone come walking up behind me.

“Are you okay?”

I turned to see a ridiculously pretty girl with sleek amber colored hair and eyes that almost exactly matched the color of her hair. She was wearing a soft red shift-dress and carrying a box I recognized as a first aid kit.

“I'm fine.” I didn't move from the wide windowsill that I had curled up in. The view of the city from the building Gauge and his crew called the Underground was very different from the mountain view I had been so fascinated with last night. The shops, people and smells were so much closer and just so much more real than they had seemed last night when Seth had stood in the beauty school window at the top of the mountain and pointed out the various landmarks to me.

“Are you sure?” The amber-haired girl asked. “Gauge said that he thought you might have scraped your knees.”

I flexed my right leg without thinking about it. The slight soreness reminded me that there were a few small scratches from where I had knelt down in the gravel to pull Moira away from her doomed mother. “I'm fine.”

“Did you clean those cuts?” She pointed at the scratches on my knees.

I halfway smiled at her. “Actually, yes. I've spent most of my life working in-.” I stopped myself before I blurted out that I'd been trained as a nurse in the Cube's hospital ward. Gauge already knew that I was from the Cube but it wasn't exactly knowledge that needed to get around. “I know a little bit about first aid.”

“I see.” The girl clearly hadn't missed my near blunder. I could see the curiosity in her eyes. She sat down on the edge of the windowsill beside me. “My name's Lola. What's yours?”

“Pilar.” My name wasn't a secret.

“Gauge told me that your parents got sold in the meat market and that you're trying to find them,” Lola spoke the words gently. The expression on her pixie-like face was kind.

I took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. Tears were burning the backs of my eyes. “My dad might still be in the city somewhere.”

“Gauge told me that too. He's sent a few of our people out looking for information about who bought him.”

I nodded and wondered whether Lola knew we were trading Gauge a gun for his help. If I'd learned one thing in the last month, it was that everyone in the world outside the Cube was big on keeping their own secrets. Honesty seemed to have flown out the window around the same time as my parents had disappeared from our apartment without a trace.

“Don't give up hope.” Lola put her hand over mine. Her skin was soft and warm. “If your dad is in Ra-Shet, Gauge will find him. Gauge may seem a little scary but he's a good guy. He takes a lot of pride in reuniting families whenever he can.”

I nodded again as the tears came. I turned my face away from her so that I didn't have to look at Lola as I cried. The lights of the city were so close and so bright that they burned my eyes.

Lola scooted closer to me and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. “It's okay to cry.”

“I just thought we would find them today,” I whimpered as tears streamed down my cheeks. The sobs were coming faster now. “I just want to know where they are. Not knowing whether they are alive or dead is so hard.”

“Oh honey.” Lola stroked her fingers through my hair and then pulled me tightly against her. She smelled like roses.

“I just want this nightmare to be over. I want my parents back. I want to go home,” I cried.

“Maybe we can find them,” Lola tried to sooth me. “And then you can go home.”

“I can't go home,” I said. “I'll never be able to go home again.”

“Then make a new home,” she said calmly. “You're still alive and hopefully we can help you find your parents. As long as you have your family, you can build a new life.”

Her words struck a chord of truth with me. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and pulled back from her slightly. “Thank you. I needed to hear that.”

Lola smiled prettily at me. She reached out and brushed my hair away from my eyes. “You have to try to see the positive in your situation. You didn't get your parents back to today, but you didn't find out for sure that they were dead either. You still have hope, right?”

I nodded.

“Then buck up, kiddo.” Lola's eyes were incredibly kind. “You can't give up yet.”

“She's not going to give up,” a familiar voice echoed from the doorway behind us. “It's not in her nature.”

“You have too much faith in me,” I stood up and began to walk towards the shadowy figure in the doorway.

Lola's fingers dug into my arm as she gasped. “Jeremiah?”

Chapter 11

“Hello Lola.”

“Jeremiah? Is it really you?” Lola released my arm just as quickly as she had grabbed it. She ran across the room and then stopped abruptly when she was less than a foot away from him. I could hear her breath coming in heavy, almost frantic gasps as she stared up into a pair of mirrored sunglasses.

“No, it's me.” Seth flipped the sunglasses back onto the top of his head, revealing his dead white eye to her.

“Seth.” Lola took a step back from him, her voice shaky. “Oh god. Seth.”

“Not happy to see me?” He slipped the glasses back down over his bad eye.

Lola's slender chest heaved as she took a visibly deep breath and then flung her arms around his neck in a tight hug. “You know I'm always happy to see you. I just wasn't expecting to see you here. I thought for a minute that you were Jeremiah. You look so much like him now that you're older. ”

Seth wrapped his arms back around her. “Jeremiah's dead.”

“Have you found his body?” Lola pulled back away from Seth.

“No, but-.”

“But nothing. You're assuming he's dead, but you don't know for sure.” Lola ran her hands back through her hair and titled her chin up at Seth. “He's not dead, Seth.”

“He's dead.”

“He doesn't feel dead here.” She pointed to the spot on her chest where her heart would be. “I'd know if he were dead.”

“It has been four years and he hasn't come back. He was being held in the catacombs when they collapsed.”

“He could have made it out,” Lola insisted. “Don't lose faith, Seth. Jeremiah always told us that we can't ever lose faith.”

“I never had any faith to begin with, Lola. I only deal in facts.” Seth sighed and looked over at me.

“And yet you're the brother who everyone thinks is a god.” Lola didn't make any effort to keep the irony out of her voice.

“I'm not a god,” Seth said. “If I were, I wouldn't have spent the last three hours chasing rumors and whispers halfway through the city trying to figure out what had happened to Pilar's parents.”

Lola looked back towards me. “You're here because of her?”

“Yes,” Seth replied without explaining anything.

Lola took a deep breath and then exhaled it slowly. She was very visibly trying to pull herself together. “You're the boy Gauge told me about then?”

Seth shrugged. “I suppose I could be. Depends on what Gauge told you.”

“Let me see your arm.” Lola held out her hand to him. Seth hesitated for a minute and then held up his right arm. He'd traded out his ruined jacket for a new one while he'd been gone. The sleeve of this jacket was neither torn nor bloody.

Lola wasn't fooled. She caught his hand in hers and then pushed his sleeve up past his elbow, revealing spiral after spiral of angry, oozing puncture wounds. She let out a sharp hiss. “You let someone do this to you?”

“I wouldn't exactly say I let him do it. He was going to hit a little girl with the whip. I caught the end of the lash as it came down. It coiled around my arm. It doesn't hurt.”

“It doesn't hurt because you don't feel pain anymore,” Lola said. “It looks bad, Seth.”

“Who cares?” He countered. “It doesn't look any worse than my face does.”

Lola swallowed visibly and then looked away. She was still clutching his hand in hers. He wasn't making any effort to pull away. “Let me bandage it, at least.”

“No point. It won't get infected.” Seth smirked at her with more bitterness than I had thought possible. “Zombies can't get sick.”

“I'm well aware of what you are, Seth.” Lola began leading Seth to the windowsill where she had set down her medical supplies. “But I'm guessing you'd rather the entire Underground not find out that the high priest of the Church of Chaos is walking among them?”

“I don't even know what you're talking about,” Seth replied mildly.

Lola rolled her pretty amber eyes at him. She pulled a roll of thick white bandages out of her box. “Wrapping that arm will draw a whole lot less attention than pretending nothing is wrong. Dozens of people saw you get hurt. No one will be surprised to see you sporting a bandage.”

Seth stared down at his own torn flesh. “It won't heal.”

“You planning on hanging around the city long enough for anyone to notice that you don't heal?” Lola asked.

“No,” Seth said. “I wasn't even planning on staying tonight.”

Lola took out a small bottle of disinfectant and a clean cloth. She methodically began cleaning blood away from the cuts on his arm. “Don't underestimate Gauge. He already knows something isn't right about you.”

Seth scowled. “What did he say to you?”

“He told me that something strange had happened in the meat market today. He said a guy who he'd never seen before got in Merrick Mavon's face.”

“Who?”

“The owner of the meat market.”

“You mean the fat bastard?”

Lola nodded. “He's rather large.”

“I'm going to kill him before I leave the city. Just so you know.”

“Mmm, yes. Gauge mentioned that you weren't scared. He said you never flinched. You never shook. He said he half thought you were going to pull out a handgun and shoot Merrick where he stood.”

“Nah.” Seth shook his head as she began to wrap bandages up the length of his arm. “Not painful enough. That jerk is going to suffer when I get my hands on him.”

“My point is that you convinced exactly no one that you were just another rural taking a morning stroll through the sights of the city.”

“I had a feeling my rural story didn't fly,” Seth said.

“Yeah. No. You might pass for a rural to someone who catches sight of you from across a crowded market or a busy street. No one who has to interact with you is going to buy that story.”

“It was the best story I could come up with,” Seth said. “You have any better ideas for what to tell people?”

“Have you considered just telling the truth?” She sounded tense, maybe even upset.

“I am telling the truth. I'm just leaving out a couple of personal details.” Seth smirked. “Pilar's parents were taken by a flesh broker against their will. She asked me to help her save them. We tracked them to the meat market. They weren't in the meat market. We're looking for information about whether or not they're alive or dead.”

Lola sighed. “Do you know which flesh broker took them?”

Seth barely hesitated. “Bud Moon.”

“Bud Moon only takes people from the Cube,” Lola said.

“Yes,” Seth nodded. “Pilar's from the Cube. At least, that was where she started out her life. I've been trying to convince her to come join me on the dark side.”

Lola turned her attention back to me for the first time since Seth had walked into the room. Her amber-eyed gaze traveled from the tips of my prettily painted toes, over my pretty yellow dress and up to the top of my once-again frizzy but still red curls.

“You must be something special,” she said after a short pause.

“Not really,” I disagreed with a shake of my head. “Mostly, I'm just confused and scared.”

Lola considered me for a moment longer and then offered me a small smile. “If your parents are still in the city, we'll be able to find them.”

“I hope so,” I said. “I really hope so.”

“Me too,” Seth commented idly. “Otherwise I just acquired a gnarly new scar for nothing.” He held up his freshly bandaged arm.

“It wasn't for nothing,” I reminded him. “If the whip did that kind of damage to you, can you imagine what it would have done to Moira?”

“He would have either killed her or disfigured her for life,” Lola chimed in.

“Which is why he has to die,” Seth said idly. “Believe me, that fat bastard will be roasting on a spit before I leave the city.”

“Oh, I believe you.” Lola walked back up to Seth and wrapped her arms around his neck. She was nearly a full head shorter than him. The top of her head barely came up to the bottom of his chin. “And speaking of when you leave the city?”

I felt a totally unexpected and unprecedented rush of jealousy flood through my veins as Seth put his hands on Lola's hips.

“Hmm?” he asked.

“You're not leaving me behind this time.” She stood up on her tippy-toes and pressed her lips against his. After the slightest hesitation, Seth kissed her back.

They were still kissing when Gauge walked into the room.